Healthcare access crucial for mothers and children in crisis (Sabong News)

Zainab didn’t sleep well last night. The lights and the incessant beeping of the machines in the intensive care unit would keep anyone awake. But mainly she couldn’t sleep because she was worried about her one-year-old son, Takberullah. He also had a restless, irritable night as he was having trouble breathing until the doctor gave him some medication. “Why is my baby’s foot cold?” Zainab asks a medic, clutching Takberullah’s ankle as she pushes a blanket over his chest. Takberullah has been in the pediatric intensive care unit of the Doctors Without Borders / Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)-supported Boost hospital in Lashkar Gah, Helmand province, for the last three days. Ten days ago, he and his two sisters developed a fever and diarrhea, but Takberullah became much sicker than his siblings. After two days a rash appeared, and his mother brought him to Boost hospital where he was diagnosed with measles. Now he has severe pneumonia, a life-threatening respiratory infection, and hypoglycemia, meaning his blood sugar is low. These complications explain his cold hands and feet and leave him in a critical condition. “How long will he have to be here?” asks Zainab, “I have other children sick at home but I don’t know how they are doing.” Takberullah is being given oxygen, antibiotics, and glucose to fight the complications. He is one of over 1,400 children with measles that Doctors Without Borders saw in its projects in Helmand and Herat in February. Half developed a complication that required hospital admission. The measles outbreak is particularly alarming as Afghanistan is already facing a nutritional crisis. For months, children receiving treatment in Doctors Without Borders’ feeding centers in Helmand and Herat have often had to share beds as the number of patients exceeds the centers’ bed capacity. Across both projects, from January until the end of February, there were almost 800 children admitted with severe acute malnutrition. Zainab’s worry over Takberullah is similar to the fears and concerns of other mothers caught in the same situation. In Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, and other emergencies where Doctors Without Borders work, their teams have seen the struggle of mothers to provide healthcare for themselves and their children. Renny Anggia Julianti, a gynecologist from Indonesia worked at Doctors Without Borders’ specialized maternity hospital in Khost, Afghanistan in 2019. “In Khost Maternity Hospital, we would receive 70 to 80 patients a day. It was an emergency setting hospital, and since health facilities are limited, people came to our facilities for healthcare treatment. We admitted more than 2,000 patients in a single month, with an average of 1,900 to 2,000 deliveries per month. That’s around 60 to 70 deliveries per day, with two to three percent of them being cesarean births,” she shared. In Yemen, Monica Costeira, a pediatrician, talks about how the war has added extra weight to its already weak health infrastructure. “Many of them (patients) die due to diseases that are perfectly treatable and preventable if only they had access to a hospital with the necessary staff and medication.” Monica described going to the hospital in Yemen as an ‘odyssey’, with huge challenges faced by parents bringing their sick children to the hospital. “There are mothers screaming in pain and newborns taking their last breaths, simply because they were not able to access basic medical care,” she said. Doctors Without Borders needs your support to help mothers, children and communities access life-saving medical care. This month, let us show our solidarity with patients enduring the devastation of war and other emergencies. Help us provide them with much-needed medical care, especially mothers and their children. Visit for more information and to show your support. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an independent medical humanitarian organization delivering life-saving emergency medical humanitarian aid to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, pandemics, natural disasters, and healthcare exclusion. We work in over 70 countries worldwide, from North Africa to South America, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East, in villages not found on any map, in refugee camps, in hospitals and clinics, in projects, serving the health needs of the vulnerable.